


Oceans of Me and You

by laekanik



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 17:29:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5172920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laekanik/pseuds/laekanik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'll be the judge of time," and what followed after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oceans of Me and You

**Author's Note:**

> I cried like a baby during Peter's performance and wanted to hug him so badly. My love for Twelve fueled me into writing this.
> 
> The title comes from Payiva by Willow Smith which I listened to while writing this as well as The Rest of My Life by Hans Zimmer. Enjoy.

"Longest month of my life."

A statement, simple and blunt.

Two thousand years of existing and one single month had carried on painfully slow for him. The concept was almost unimaginable to her. To make time slow down for someone so ancient, who saw lifetimes go by as quickly as the flame on a matchstick before it dissipated into smoke.

She watched as he made his way up the stairs and out the door, leaving it open for her. She followed slowly before stepping out and being met with a beach of smooth stones and a grey sky over an ocean.

She wobbled a bit as she made her way over the uneven surface of the shore and to him. He stood out starkly in the distance with his hands shoved in his pockets, the wind ruffling through his curls and coat. A dark line against the blue and grey of the ocean and sky.

He didn't turn when she arrived next to him, keeping his eyes glued to the horizon. She studied his profile, the lines of his skin, the sharpness of the bridge of his nose, the curve of his jaw. He looked like a stone figure, guarding this beach from unsavory forces. Mirroring his stance, she put her hands in her coat pockets as a particularly chilling breeze caressed her and stared ahead at the seemingly endless ocean of blue.

"Are we on earth?"

Her voice sounding alien as it pervaded the lull created by the rushing waves and wind. He shook his head, lips pursed.

"No. The planet Blue."

"Blue?"

"Yeah. Completely uninhabited planet covered entirely by water."

She felt the side of her mouth quirk up. The idea of planet all its own. No forces or life forms causing destruction. Just peace as the tide rose and fell and the waves moved back and forth. The tranquility of it all was breathtaking.

"It's beautiful," she murmured. He nodded in agreement but said nothing more. They stood in comfortable noiselessness, matching their breathing to the push and pull of the waves.

They glanced down as the water finally reached out and touched their shoes. He took a step back, pulling a hand out of his pocket and ghosting it over her back.

"Tide's pulling in. We should go."

She allowed him to guide her towards the TARDIS, his fingers pressing gently against her back before returning to the safety of his pockets. They walked leisurely over the stones, arms bumping against one another's as they neared the blue box which she realized was becoming more of a home to her than her own flat. He waited patiently in the entryway as she stooped down and picked up one of the many stones. She ran her thumb over its smooth grey surface before placing it in her pocket and stepping through the door. She wanted something to remember this by.

He didn't speak after they flew away, just wandered around the console room in an almost aimless way. The silence that filled the room was nothing like the sereneness of the planet Blue. It spoke, or rather didn't speak at all, of the painful unsaid and the events that had transpired not too long ago.

Clara looked up from the book in her hands, a very old-looking copy of _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_. From the looks of it he had snatched it from a library fire far off into the future or something along those lines. Probably long after JK Rowling was dust in the ground. She wiped remaining soot off of her fingertips and placed the book at her feet, staring ahead.

The Doctor was now at the bookshelf, pulling books out of their places at random, flipping through a dozen pages or so before putting them back haphazardly. She tried to ignore this considering she'd spent an entire afternoon alphabetizing them while he had been tinkering on his clockwork squirrel. She wondered where it had scurried off to anyway. No matter.

Pushing herself out of the chair, she made her way over to him. His eyebrow raised slightly as he glanced at her before returning to his study of _3,297 Different Kinds of Comet Dwellers_. She leaned her shoulder against the bookcase, folding her arms across her chest and crossing her ankles.

"If you want to say something, say it," he invited, turning a page.

Clara gave his downturned face a measured look before answering, "I don't want to say anything."

"Yes you do. It's in the air."

She didn't respond and silence embraced them again. It didn't last long, being shooed away again by the thump of pages against pages as he closed his book abruptly. He replaced it in its proper place amongst its brethren and turned to her.

"Come on, out with it," he said, not unkindly. They stared at each other as she tried to gather exactly _what_ is was that she wanted to say.

"I never knew," she finally said, her voice coming out as a step up from a whisper. "What the war had done to you." His countenance darkened even further as his mouth tightened and his gaze temporarily flickered to the ground. "I saw...when I was with the three of you. I knew that it was painful, of course it was but..." she shrugged, "I never really thought how much."

His last incarnation was a ferris wheel of emotions. Rising with the highs of happiness and rolling down to the lows of sadness as normally and appropriately as any human would. But this new one, his twelfth body, it was still figuring out how to show, or so she had thought. Seeing him break today, as the horrors of war and past deeds sunk their talons into him and tore through the recesses of his memory, was almost unnerving. Making it hurt her that much more.

He forced a small, rueful smile. "Not something that really comes up."

Why did humans and timelords alike think that they had to smile when they so obviously were in pain? As if they had to downplay their suffering for the sake of their loved ones. It wasn't fair. He leaned so that his back was against the bookshelf, facing the console and away from her. A politely dismissive stance. The "thank you for your concern but I'd much rather be alone" body language that everyone, sad teenagers especially, knew. Clara stood her ground, watching him once more like she had on the beach. His features now looked harder, as if he were trying more deliberately to keep them together.

His own distant train of thought and view of the blinking lights of the console were broken as Clara stepped in front of him. Getting on tiptoe, she wordlessly wrapped her arms around his neck, forcing him to bow to her level.

"What's this for?" he asked, chin pressed into her shoulder.

"To let you hide your face," she answered.

He felt a weight in his stomach as she spoke his own words and felt his raised arms slacken as she continued.

"Because I know it as well as you know mine. And I know that you're hurting." She placed a hand at the nape of his neck fingers sinking into his curls. "So you can show that, Doctor," she went on, voice dropping to an affectionate whisper. "I don't have to see. I just need to be here to let you know that you are loved."

As she spoke his arms slowly found their way around her, fingers splayed across her back. His cheek pressed against her neck as he squeezed his eyes shut, mouth trembling. She felt him release a shaking breath and ran her fingers through his hair again. A silent affirmation that it was alright to cry and let others know that you weren't alright.

She had asked him once if he loved making the impossible decision, coming to the conclusion that it was an addiction for him. But it hadn't been that at all. He had said as much in the Black Archives. He made the impossible decision, taking the responsibility of other people's conflict, so that they wouldn't have to. To protect them from the pain that he wrestled with every day and allowing it to shape him into the person he was instead of break him. Shape him into the Doctor.

"I love you," she mouthed over his shoulder, the words feeling true and warranted as her lips shaped them.

Though he did not see her lips move or hear her words, the Doctor felt them, as surely and certainly as he felt his own pain and guilt. And a calm filled him. Not forever, because nothing lasts forever, but for a moment. And that moment was sweet.

**Author's Note:**

> The Twelfth Doctor is my absolute favorite and must be loved unconditionally at all costs. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was my tribute to Ten since he most likely traveled forward in time to read it.


End file.
